Elon Musk: With Jobs Gone, Google Will Win Mobile (And Look Out For Hyperloop) | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk: With Jobs Gone, Google Will Win Mobile (And Look Out For Hyperloop)

techcrunch.com

140 pointschauzer103 comments

> Lastly he revealed he was working on something he calls the “Hyperloop” which will be a “cross between a rail-gun and a Concorde.”

Sounds a lot like the Lofstrom Loop, repurposed for Earthside transport.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

From the wiki, "...the costs for accessing space with a launch loop could be as low as $3/kg..."

Holy. Shit.

Cost to start? 10B. So let's triple it and say $30B. Reducing cost-to-orbit-per-kg to a few bucks? Priceless. It would change space travel as we know it.

For the first time, I've seen something that doesn't require magic dust or pixies -- at least in the overview stage. Don't know about the details.

If this is something along the lines of what he is thinking, and if the engineering works out, and if the funding can be secured for either the ground-based or space-based version, Musk will easily leap-frog Howard Hughes in the history books.

Of course, that's a lot of "if"s. But here's hoping.

And I was thinking "maglev in tunnels along great circles" because anything that flies can crash.

If this really is the concept that Musk is working on, it would likely launch a vehicle into space to reach their earthly destination. This matches his idea that it would be "immune to weather" and also not a tube.

So if it works, it would be great both for space tourism AND high-speed travel around the world. Really ties together his transportation and space ventures :)

The hyperloop is not a space based system. The little that Musk has said about it, indicates that. For example, he said it would be a vast improvement over the current rail system planned for California, and could plausibly be powered by solar. Nobody is going to use space travel to go between LA and San Francisco.

Nobody is going to use space travel to go between LA and San Francisco.

I'm sure people once thought that no one was going to climb to 30,000 feet to go between LA and SF either.

Wow... I have no idea then -_-

>The mass budget for the track/ribbon system per meter is as follows: Temporary erection sheath 700 g/m [...]

Ah, yes, interesting. via http://launchloop.com/LaunchLoop?action=AttachFile&do=ge...

Wasn't Google on its way to winning mobile even when Jobs was around? I know that Apple makes far more money on hardware, but Google is an advertising company. As a company that makes most of its profits from advertising, isn't the largest share of the market enough for them to "win"?

Also, isn't it possible that Apple could continue making boatloads of money off hardware even if Android builds off of its smartphone success and becomes the most popular tablet OS? (Which I think is inevitable unless Windows 8 devices get better) Wouldn't this scenario mean that both companies are winners?

So from the recap of quite an interesting interview, TC went with the apple vs google headline? That was hardly the most interesting aspect of the article.

"But the airport officials were scared. They didn't know whether the destruction of the launch loop was an isolated incident of terrorist sabotage, or maybe the beginnings of a revolution-no one seemed to think, ever, that it might have been just a simple accident. It was scary, all right. There's a hell of a lot of kinetic energy stored in a Lofstrom loop, over twenty kilometers of iron ribbon, weighing about five thousand tons, moving at twelve kilometers a second. Out of curiosity I asked Albert later and he reported that it took 3.6 x lO^8 Joules to pump it up. And when one collapses, all those Joules come out at once, one way or another."

From Heechee Rendezvous:

http://www.amazon.com/Heechee-Rendezvous-Frederik-Pohl/dp/03...

Here's an idea on how Apple can "win."

The phone market is quickly turning into a mature business like the PC is today. Essentially all of the major innovation on the hardware side is done and the software side will be where people choose their phone/tablet.

IOS has the best apps, period. Apple needs this to always be the case. Just like people buy Windows because of its apps (games, etc.)

Developers make more money on the IOS platform (by far) than any other. Apple needs this to always be the case.

I submit that Apple needs to drop the commission rate for apps sales from 30% to some value approaching zero. This will starve Android/Win8/BB of developer mind share.

Developers will write great apps, make more money and users will pick the IOS platform because it has the apps (games) they want.

Here's a number of ideas on how Apple could "win" in the way we're apparently talking about:

(1) slash margins and sell the phone cheaper to carriers

(2) subsidize phones at point of sale with spiffs

(3) produce low price phones.

(4) slash their ecosystem commission.

(5) subsidize loss leader app and content promotions.

Yeah they don't seem very interested in doing any of these and "winning" by this definition. Why do people care so much about Apple "winning" like this when they've clearly rejected this model?

The thing is, having a 0% commission would definitely make developers happier and maybe make some more consider iOS as a first platform (although most do already). But that won't keep them from releasing their apps on other platforms after, to make extra revenue. Which in a lot of cases is what happens now, with Apple taking a 30% cut.

You simply can't ignore Android, the biggest mobile OS and its doesn't get starved if iOS developers earn 30% more.

I think about a bold move like buying Verizon or so.

But in my opinion Apple is losing by simple being Apple. They can't keep up with the speed of Google. They spent their money left and right and Apple is sitting on it's cash. Why? They even paid out a dividend, that was the sign that they have no big plan. What was one of the first actions of Tim Cook.

Android being the "biggest mobile OS" is like QNX being the biggest embedded OS. If you have 80% market share but 90% of your users don't care about being a phonetechnoweeniegeek, then it's irrelevant.

The stat we should be tracking is: out of people who actually use their phones (a horrible name for these things now anyway) as computers, which percentage of those people are using which device? We constantly see stats of "Android has 80% market share! But--now keep this between just you and me--iOS makes up 80% of mobile web traffic."

Actually no, Android now wins in large parts of Europe and Asia by web traffic, iOS still slightly ahead in the US and only massively ahead in some outliers like Switzerland. One thing is sure, you can't ignore Android anymore.

Source: Statscounter

I wonder how portion of Android users care about their platform.

Given the cheapness of some of these phones, would not surprise me if many users had low interest in their devices beyond the phone and basic web/app use.

Looking at the user boards and among my circles, many Android user actually seem to care more about their platform - for better or worse. Apple's continuing "thermo nuclear war* seems to spawn a strong anti reaction. Who'd have thought. I just hope enough Apple exes see this, too.

Is there actual research on this?

I can't see this massive Android flood being based largely on OS loyalty.

Buying Verizon would be hard to get past the government. See how difficult it was for AT&T to buy Alltel (they had to give a not-insignificant part of it to Verizon to play fair).

Buying T-Mobile, on the other hand...

One telecom purchasing another is a completely different beast with a different kind of history than a hardware/operating system company purchasing a telecom.

It was difficult for AT&T to purchase Alltel because after the breakup of Ma Bell, the baby bells have been eating each other and consolidating into the current Big Three (ATT, Tmobile, Verizon). The AT&T purchase of Alltel was seen as a baby bell further consolidating the wireless marketplace.

Buy T-Mobile pump 50+ Billion into infrastructure and make the iPhone the only unlimited LTE receiver by simply buying one.

You have the best network so a lot will join with their contracts. Make tons of profit there.

I think Apple has a real problem now, the iPhone is their primary source of revenue. There is not much diversification going on there.

Edit: And btw, this would create an Arms Race for greater good, why not "Who has the best Network" than "Who has the most patents?"

Its a global game not a US one. The amount of money to buy global operators is large. Vodafone is 125bn dollars and as a global operator is just the first on the list. Apple and Google can't just buy global mobile.

True, but you can expand that. It is a long term strategy.

They are sitting on 120B that is just in some hedge funds anyway, why not do something with it that has a competitive advantage. They just have no plan....

Give this money Amazon or Google they would know what to do with it. That's the reason i dislike Apple. They don't have a mayor purpose any more. If there is no company vision, then at least do something that improves everyone's live and gives this company another shot. In the worst case Apple loses the phone wars and is the biggest mobile operator in the world. Not even that of a risky move, mobile operators have a pretty solid business model.

I think it will not matter as much which company it is, as that it is a cell phone company. Having one corporation in charge of both the device and the service is something that will hurt the consumers in the long run I believe.

Normally I'd agree, but US carriers have done an exceptional job of crippling mobile computing over the last decade, and just about anything would be an improvement. If one or more of Apple, Google, or Microsoft were to buy a carrier and pledge to run it as a dumb pipe, that would be great for everyone. Well, except the incumbents who would be introduced to real competition.

>You simply can't ignore Android, the biggest mobile OS and its doesn't get starved if iOS developers earn 30% more.

You really can. It's only "biggest" in sales, but not all those sales are to people buying apps and living the "online" life. In most interviews/surveys developers say that the make little money on Android sales compared to iOS, and that they prefer ad-supported apps so that at least can make a buck with free (which only was for high volume apps).

On the other side, there are tons of iOS only apps and games, that ignore Android altogether, including very successful examples.

>Essentially all of the major innovation on the hardware side is done and the software side will be where people choose their phone/tablet.

>I submit that Apple needs to drop the commission rate for apps sales from 30% to some value approaching zero. This will starve Android/Win8/BB of developer mind share.

Main source of Google's revenue is advertisement, main source of Apple's revenue is hardware sales. If both hardware sales and marketplace commissions will be lowered then it would be improvement rather for Google than Apple.

Have you worked through the entire context of this approach?

There was little reason for an 3rd party developer to spend resources to produce a Mac/Linux port during Windows' heyday. Except as a labor of love.

But Apple doesn't own 90% market share. It's split, and growing toward Android. There is no sensible reason for developers not to develop for BOTH platforms, until it is no longer profitable to do so.

IOS has the best apps, period. Apple needs this to always be the case.

Until they opened up maps for other apps, this wasn't the case. Siri also doesn't look like a world beater yet. 3rd party app quality is still high, but it's disappointing how they let new core apps be so bad on release. I'm not saying software like that is easy. But I think they took a bit of a black eye by releasing software that seemed so half-baked.

You're saying people buy phones/tablet because of better apps/software. Although IOS is best in this respect, aren't people buying more android phones than iphones?

What does winning in mobile look like? Apple isn't interested in low price low margin devices. They sell premium high margin products. If apples market share were to freeze exactly as it is now with the same margins forever raking in tens of billions of dollars a year in pure profit, they'd be happy. Of course they'd be even happier with even more, but android outselling them 2:1 isnt a problem as long as Apples margins are greate by 20:1.

I believe the common theory is that there are strong network effects in the mobile OS market. iOS is still an attractive platform for app developers but if the Apple share of the smartphone market keeps shrinking, developers will focus on Android instead.

"Keeps shrinking"?

Apple's share of the global smartphone market is increasing (module minor seasonal variations and product launch effects) and smartphones are becoming the phone market. Android is replacing RIM and Nokia faster than Apple is.

I'm not saying Elon Musk isn't right (I think a free phone OS is likely to win in the long term, since most people will buy on price over quality and eventually quality will improve or network effects will overwhelm quality considerations, just as Windows eventually destroyed Mac OS and became better in all ways thanks to ... Oh wait.)

http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/14/google-vs-samsung/

>Musk said it was important that societies create an environment where it’s “important it’s seen as a socially desirable thing to be an entrepreneur.”

I think this is something whose importance is hard to fathom when living in hot startup ecosystems. When I was living in Japan, I was shocked at how people saw entrepreneurship in an undesirable light. In fact, new graduate polls showed that the most desirable type of profession was a public sector worker, followed by megacorp employee, then SME employee. Entrepreneur was literally at the bottom of the ladder [1].

This is in sharp contrast to the States, where polls show that people look up to and want to become entrepreneurs (the "start ups are cool" mentality) and see public sector workers as the most undesirable type of employment [2].

It's hard to live a life that isn't widely socially accepted, and having a society that looks favorably upon entrepreneurship or sole proprietorships is hugely important for giving people the peace of mind and confidence to embark on their individual paths [3]. Say what you will about the current proliferation of startups, but anything that promotes the long term social acceptability of starting a company is a net positive in the long run for making it easier for people to take the plunge themselves in the future.

Our environment skews our perspective, and our perspective determines what we think is possible. We tend to believe in the triumph of the individual spirit and determination over mental hurdles, but it's a rare specimen that has the both the hard skills to create something great and the mental power to actually convince themselves to do so against conventional wisdom. Don't you that that it'd be desirable to reduce the mental hurdles so that those with different mental predispositions can roam freely?

[1] I think doctor/lawyer/accountant were omitted because there are very few who enter these professions each year and is statistically somewhat irrelevant.

[2] This isn't to say that working in the public sector is actually a bad gig or not useful, but public perception does matter in many ways in attracting talent.

[3] In fact, patio11's lifestyle is generally derided in Japan, even though us HN'ers look up to the example he sets both in terms of skills and lifestyle. I have friends who work in the same city that patio11 used to (and perhaps even in the same industry...) who cannot get themselves to leave their megacorp jobs even though they have mid-5-figure income streams from their side gigs that they could obviously grow if they resigned from their day jobs and committed themselves to it. Their reasoning? They fear that they would no longer be accepted by society without said megacorp job. You need supreme confidence in your self worth to live without the "social proof" of an establishment on your shoulder in this culture, and it's a disservice to the world that great talent remains locked up because of this.

Could the mindset of Japan be related in part to the idea of a strong long-term social contract between employee and corporation that exists in Japan? I read somewhere that in Japan, corporations are expected to take care of the employees in an almost familial sense, and in return, employees are expected to give their life energy to the corporation. I would be willing to wager that employee turnover in Japanese companies is lower than in the United States, and that quitting and working for a competitor for a higher salary would be seen as betrayal.

If this is the case, perhaps having a Megacorp job in Japan makes an employee feel protected and safe in a way that doesn't exist (any more) in US Megacorp jobs. I recall in 2008, Toyota bragged about not closing factories or laying people off, and saying how they care about their employees. This is in spite of Toyota factories being without unions, and it probably being more profitable to have layoffs during the economic downturn.

The situation in Japan is that all individualistic thought is progressively destroyed in the early years at school. When kids are thought not to ask any question or to challenge the professor, it is unlikely you will end up with an environment where entrepreneurs will flourish and thrive. The society in Japan is also very effective in making sure everyone fits the same mold.

This being said, there is still fascination for entrepreneurs in Japan. There is one TV program I watch every week, called "Canbria Kyuden" (Palace Cambria) discussing exclusively stories of Japanese entrepreneurs based on new market insights. They review large and small corporations alike and this is a very famous program here in Japan. It is probably "edgy" in a way, but I guess the interest/public is there as well.

The gist of your comment is correct, in the sense that a megacorp job in Japan is safer than a job at an American one.

However, the principle of lifetime employment in Japan has been slowly eroded in the past couple of decades. Toyota's employees still enjoy lifetime employment, but most of the manufacturing needed to make a car gets done by Toyota subsidiaries or subcontractors. These employ people on a contract basis, and they can stop renewing the contracts at any time. E.g. while Toyota was bragging about not laying off employees, their subcontractors were slashing jobs. Lots of workers were unemployed; the government kindly invited Brazilian workers to go back to Brazil and not to come back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigran...

By the way, Toyota employees do belong to a union. It wouldn't be easy for Toyota to have a layoff. For comparison, JAL (Japan Airlines) got sued after laying off people, even though it was basically bankrupt.

I think you're right, and I think it's all about culture.

In the west, there's the aspiration of the self-made man. Western culture values individual freedom, personal satisfaction and people who get rich in no time.

In Japan, they value hard work and communal values come before the individual's. So it's more desirable to join a large organization or work on the public sector, and work until you retire.

There are supposed to be two threads in Japanese society. One that comes from the values of peasant farmers, which emphasizes communal values, and one which comes out of the old feudal power structure, which emphasizes personal loyalty over all else. I suspect that both of those would tend to work against the aspiration of the self made man.

Employee turnover is very low compared to the US. There is absolutely a feeling of safety in your employment, which is just one of the reasons why suicides spike in the spring at the end of the fiscal year. Pay grade generally scales with years spent at the company, so there is little chance or incentive for younger employees to rise too efficiently.

Interesting that you bring this up, as I was just reading patio11's article and thinking the same thing. When I was 18 I pivoted my business (freelancing, design work mostly plus webdev) to 'consulting' after discovering that my value wasn't in being on someone's hourly payroll, but rather providing ideas and solutions that were worth much more in the long run. I'm 20 now, and after a spell of no work (while in school, which I am no longer) I've been kicking things back into gear by trying to expand further into developer circles. I've spent the last week in my own Cocoa/iOS bootcamp while managing any current client work I have which I no longer bill by the hour. I'm only mentioning all of this here because I had the same experience while living in Japan, with a few optimistic exceptions– my fiancées parents. They and and a few other people I've met actually seemed very accepting of how I've done things so far, despite being quite risky. We're hoping to move back to Yokohama semi-permanently in the next couple years, and one of our primary goals is to bring more of that mentality back to the people who can do something with it, since even Japan's most 'creative' fields appear sorely lacking.

Elon Musk is an inspiration - he looks at big, real world problems and solves for them instead of spinning his wheels on the next shiny app. Especially appreciate his views on too many people going into finance or law rather than science and engineering.

Poor editing in this article, if anyone finds a video of the original interview please post - tried to search for it but no luck.

Not to refute his point on Apple post-Jobs, but Samsung is the only company in the Android ecosystem making any money, so it's not clear that Google is winning anything.

Let me help you understand. Google is in the advertising business. They make money every time someone uses their services. When someone like Apple is in charge of mobile hardware and software, they can easily push Google out of the picture by setting the default search engine to Bing (which they thankfully haven't done) or changing the default mapping solution to their own (which they unfortunately have). Android is a way for Google to ensure that, as long as they provide the best search and mapping solutions, their services will dominate on mobile devices.

Amazon is shipping Android devices without Google services, and little stops Samsung from doing the same, should they ever decide that they can make more money that way.

Once again, you're missing the point. Android isn't about making sure Google has a stranglehold on mobile devices, it's about leveling the playing field. Sure, Amazon can release a device with Bing as the default search engine, but Samsung can release a device with Google as the default search engine. And as long as Google is better than Bing (which it is right now), people will prefer the Samsung device over the Amazon one, at least in terms of searching the web. And if Microsoft pays off Samsung to set the default search engine to Bing on their devices too, someone else can come in and make yet another tablet that uses Google, since their mobile OS development costs will have been nullified by Android being free software.

So your point is that OEMs will ship Android phones with Google services because they're better than alternatives? What if Microsoft pays Samsung to ship their phones with Bing, and they're still wildly successful? How does being the developer of Android OS help Google reach search customers? If the most successful Android OEMs were to ditch Google services for whatever reason, then Android OS development costs would be better spent directly paying OEMs to ship with Google services, and Google would have little reason to keep sponsoring Android's development.

You're forgetting a lesson we learned from Microsoft. When people in developing countries were pirating Microsoft software (Windows, Office, etc), Microsoft released lower-cost versions of their software to save some face, but in reality Microsoft just didn't care. Let developing countries pirate our software, the important thing is they're using our software. Which means they're not using competitors software. Which means Microsoft stays on top, in the mindset of the people, and when those countries become developed the people will buy legitimate copies of Windows/Office.

Google has this even better on Android. People aren't pirating Android, they're using open source software. And even if that software runs Bing or Yahoo search and the users like Word to Go rather than Google Docs and Outlook.com rather than Gmail, they're still using Android. Which means they're not using iOS. And chances are, they'll want to stick with the OS they know, so in the future they might end up with a more Google-ified device. Keeping them off iOS is the first step to having them as lifelong customers. Microsoft knew this, and Google knows this.

You missed the other critical example: Adobe.

Actually, Adobe might be a better example than Microsoft. I picked Microsoft because it's the OS space similar to Android. Adobe is a great example.

I think w1ntermute is trying to say that Google has commoditized their compliments (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html). Google is benefiting not from control but by weakening lock-in. The barrier of entry to the phone market is much lower with android dominating.

Without high barriers to entry Google can count on churn in the phone market. Right now Samsung is king, before it was HTC, maybe LG will be next? Android thus becomes the defacto OS while phone companies fight over the hardware.

Don't forget that Google has a better advertising than Bing so they can offer more for the search deals. They can easily overbid Bing if Microsoft doesn't blow money into it again.

When there are a lot of players, they have the upper hand in bidding.

Actually Android isn't free. It is so patent encumbered (and hence requiring of royalty fees) that options like Windows Phone end up being a cheaper option.

This is a common misconception. Android isn't "patent encumbered". Certain OEMs have simply given in to Microsoft's legal threats and agreed to pay them to license certain Microsoft patents (regardless of their validity and/or relevance to Android, neither of which have been confirmed in a court of law) rather than burn money on expensive legal proceedings.

Samsung would lose access to Google Maps, Gmail, and Google Play among others. Their sales would be devastated.

I don't think so.

Maps is a storm in a tea cup as we've seen from Apple and it's massive sales forecasts for iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. Gmail has third party apps. And if Samsung setup their own app store it would be very popular overnight.

Samsung has its own app store. It's popularity is so high that apparently no one on HN knew it existed (despite being shipped on every Android phone Samsung makes).

I've tried it - it is annoying and doesn't work very well. Samsung can't do good software - their best decision every was to align with someone who can.

The jury isn't really in on Maps yet:

First, nearly all iPad Minis sold to-date are the WiFi model that doesn't have GPS. Given that, I find it very hard to believe that the quality or even, quite frankly, the existence of an iPad Mini Maps application had any significant impact on those purchasing decisions.

Second, the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 were only available for a small part of their most recent quarter (the last ten or so days of September), so we wouldn't have seen any impact of Maps on those results (especially since people were still discovering the Maps problems at that time). Until Apple reports their results for the holiday quarter, we won't really know how iPhone sales are doing.

Finally, Apple is the manufacturer with the highest customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the phone industry. That they may have been able to weather a Maps outcry doesn't mean that Samsung or HTC could do the same. In fact, the volatility in the relative rankings of Android manufacturers argues the opposite.

If Samsung did not see these Google services/apps as critical to their success they would cut Google off over night.

Samsung phones come with a custom Samsung app store already. It's just as terrible as you'd expect it to be.

"The key to strategy... is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory." — Cavilo, The Vor Game

Reading your post just reminded me of that line. It's quite a brilliant line, and it seems that Google have found their forte and are exploiting it to the fullest. Also, if you're not keen enough, one could say that Google is excellent at misdirecting their strength/core-competency (w.r.t. revenue generation).

> Samsung is the only company in the Android ecosystem making any money

Says who? LG, HTC, ZTE, Asus made billions too, not as much as Samsung obviously but it would be unfair to ask all of them to be as successful as Samsung or Apple. Point is, plenty of hardware (and software) companies are making huge profits on Android.

> Silva opened by asking how rare it was these days to see companies created which were worth more than $50bn, and yet Musk himself had helped to create at least four so far.

Really? Can anyone provide me with a list of these companies?

I presume they're talking about: PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and Space X.

To be fair, none of those are worth close to $50B.

Yet. ;-)

Off the top of my head, he might be referring to PayPal, SolarCity, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors.

I was wondering the same thing. Maybe she means 5B? Although most valuations of SpaceX are not that high (definitely will be soon) and I'm not sure about Solar City...

Hyperloop - dream on: land-accelerated vehicle (a rocket-like) that is "slingshot" to the destination over the air. Acceleration even above Mach can be achieved on a maglev circular track gradually with ability to "switch" track and shoot the vehicle in the air. Land it to a maglev(!) landing pad in the form of a funnel or simpler - with a parachute-like system.

One word: Plastics.

He's said this Hyperloop is something that can't crash. If you have something that can't crash you can build it out of plastic which would be much lighter (more efficient/faster/easier to levitate) and cheaper then current high speed rail.

I think is a mag-lev plastic highly aerodynamic train with lots of rail lines so that the cars cant collide.

To me the hyperloop in my head would be a maglev train within a vacuum chamber, unless Musk has some kind of new tech in development in his research lab somewhere (not implausible if you ask me), but if i was going to build such a thing i'd probably have to do a working prototype first and it seems the easiest way to do that would be to use an existing underground train system, perhaps a derelict one. Then it would be much easier to create new infrastructure after its been proven to work.

I wonder if YC would ever be able to fund a Hyperloop? What would that look like?

hrrm, I'm skeptical of claims made by executives that don't work in that industry, although here he's probably right.

reads article

Wait, this is about some UK tech meetup where a reporter asks Musk some questions. And the quote is:

> Finally, I asked Musk who he thought would come out on top, out of Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook?

> "It’s the grudge match," he said. "It’s good for consumers that there is this battle. I think probably Google will win on the phone because Jobs is out of the picture..."

"Win on the phone?" What does that even mean?

Computer industries and platforms naturally tend toward monopolies. You need the virtuous the developer <-> user loop for a platform to survive.

Apple said that without its App Store and developers people may stop buying iPhones.

So "winning on the phone" means "getting the monopoly". The situation where both platforms have 50% of the market isn't really stable in the computer industry.

"Computer industries and platforms naturally tend toward monopolies."

The last 20 years of console platform wars have proven this to be very false in a market not driven by corporate purchasing.

I wouldn't say the difference is corporate purchasing. One important reason why consoles are special cases is that there's no data that needs to be migrated from one machine to another. You just buy new games for the new console and you don't care about the data on the old console.

There's also no data that you share between 2 machines or 2 users.

Migrating from Windows to Mac used to be a huge pain because you had to move your data. And also it was beneficial to buy Windows if people were e-mailing you Word docs and spreadsheets so forth.

And then you need the entire support ecosystem and the employee base who understands Windows, which wasn't relevant to consoles.

Small businesses and individuals are just as swayed by this as corporations.

Phones have some of these issues but not all. If you could buy an Android phone, and then instantly sync all your Apple account data to it, like the music you bought, your contacts, and the photos you took, etc. then it would be a different story. But that's never going to happen.

Even FaceTime is an example of introducing a network effect. It's more valuable to buy an iPhone if your son or daughter has an iPhone so you can FaceTime with them.

So wait the first argument was that user-developer loop always leads to monopoly in computing. That's blown up and now OS lock in is what leads to monopoly? But iOS has far more lock in than Android right? So how does that lead to Android monopoly?

"I wouldn't say the difference is corporate purchasing...

And also it was beneficial to buy Windows if people were e-mailing you Word docs and spreadsheets so forth."

I'm not sure how you're trying to leverage the compatibility argument against the idea of the market being driven by corporate purchases when it's actually a consequence of it.

The original claim was that computer platforms tends toward monopolies. The existence of consoles is an interesting data point but it isn't a counterargument to this.

The user-developer loop (1) is part of the reason, and API / data lock-in (2) is another part of it.

Just like in the first case, causation in the second case goes both ways. Corporations (and not just corporations) buy Word because there is Word data and there are Word users out there.

"Corporate purchasing" doesn't explain very much to me and isn't the salient difference between consoles and phone OSes or desktop OSes. Corporations bought Windows because of the more fundamental factors that I'm pointing out.

You are correct, but mostly because console lock in simple doesn't matter as much. New console doesn't play your old games? Your old games probably suck more than the new ones anyway. New office suite can't open your customer spreadsheet? You're fucked.

Also consider that consoles have been largely unprofitable for Microsoft until recently. The console wars were a proxy for the set-top future that these companies were predicting. If consoles had to be profitable in their own right, Sony would have won a long time ago. Nintendo has been a niche for a few generations now so they don't really count (though I'm not sure how you'd classify the Wii here).

Sony eats enormous upfront losses to establish its consoles. The PS2 is now the best-selling console of all time, but even with their PSX profits they would've struggled to attract the investment needed to develop it and spend the first few years selling at a loss without the Sony mothership bankrolling them.

Nintendo by contrast makes a profit on every console it sells from day 1. IIRC the Wii is the most popular of the current generation, so I don't think you can dismiss them like that.

I suspect that in a world where console businesses had to stand or fall on their own we'd've seen a less ambitious PS2, with a higher initial price, which would ultimately have attracted fewer developers and been a more modest success. And the PS3 would look a lot more like the Wii in terms of specs and price. How much this would've damaged bluray adoption and HDTV sales is an interesting channel for speculation (and is one of the big reasons sony is happy to subsidize its console division a bit).

Nintendo by contrast makes a profit on every console it sells from day 1. IIRC the Wii is the most popular of the current generation, so I don't think you can dismiss them like that.

Not only that, they've made 4 of the top 10 selling console games this year. By contrast Microsoft Studios has 1 game on the top 10 list and the best selling game by Sony is on 26th place. The numbers are basically the same for 2011. So not only are they make healthy profits by selling more consoles than anybody else, they're also running an incredibly successful (and I assume profitable) games studio selling games for those consoles. That's not too shabby for a niche player.

The fact that Nintendo profits from games actually goes along with the great grandparent's point though. IIRC a large part of the death of Sega was a "sell consoles cheap, subsidising them with the profits we make on games" model.

I think it's less about corporate vs. non-corporate and more that games are very different from most categories of software. See also the relative success of open source.

Musk has replaced Jobs in the public mind as the Ultimate Genius Entrepreneur. And he's going to ruthlessly use it to inspire people up to Mars.

Actually, the Musk/Jobs comparison makes me think of the Famous Jobs/Sculley quote ("Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"), with Jobs in the lesser role this time.

Was doing some research on Elon. Apparently he's quite the playboy too. Dumped his older wife for a pretty young actress whom he recently dumped again. Guess money really can buy a sequence of love affairs

Oh, now. Doing that doesn't take money at all.

All he says is "probably". Misleading title.

People can't sell Apple stocks fast enough IMO. Tim Cook seems to have no vision for the future, and "where there is no vision, the people perish."

We have no idea what is in the pipeline at Apple, nor what their "vision" is. Steve Jobs and Apple never came out and announced that the iPhone was in development and that it would revolutionize the tech industry - it just did in 2007.

Let's wait a few years before we decide if Tim Cook is just riding the wave of prior success.

In a few years the market will have already decided.

The signs are out there. The cop-out design of the iPhone 5, the "blue sky" initiative started with the employees -they are scrambling for new ideas.

Steve Jobs was the soul of Apple. His fire is gone. He took it with him.

I look forward to hearing about the fortune you made shorting AAPL in 3 years.

Your thoughts may prove to come true, but R&D is a multi-year undertaking, not something you scramble on at the last hour. The iPad was in development since 2002! Jobs has only been gone for a year. His influence should remain for at least the next five years, and only after that point can we really say if Apple is out of ideas or not.

"Cop out?" Do elaborate.

What does cop-out design mean? That they didn't completely change it?

I always laugh at clueless people who keep talking about current devices like iPad Mini or iPhone 5 as a sign that Apple is dying without Steve Jobs.

Especially when Steve Jobs was personally involved in all of these decisions.

Despite the preconceived opinion you may have of me because of my user name, I am more than happy to discuss the pros and cons of Apple as a company based on real-world analysis, but what you are saying is emotionally driven and not based on anything concrete.

Apple was up $31.30 or almost 6% for the day when I read this comment.

I'm not great with stock charts, but it looks like the stock has fallen from $630 to $550 since October.

AAPL has had plenty of big stock drops in the last decade:

http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Screen-Shot...

Apple makes more money now than it ever has, so the current drop isn't necessarily more or less predictive than the previous drops have been.

I disagree. We have no idea what is in the pipeline. Every time I have heard Tim speak about his 'vision of Apple' it seems quite similar to what Steve had in mind.

We have no idea what sort of products they have in the pipeline.

They have a TON of cash.

Steve Jobs was just a man. His vision flip flopped all the time. Apple is slow and very methodical in its product decision making. They make very precise decisions, and often these product directions are mocked initially, but that eventually changes.

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